2017 Meg Hunt Artists in Residence

Meredith Leich

June 7-20

Meredith Leich is a videomaker, painter, and writer, who works with video installation, 3D animation, watercolor, music, and text. Inspired by a desire to observe, preserve, and craft narratives about our changing world, she weaves together stories of history, geography, psychology, and the climate. Born and raised in Boston, Meredith has made her home in Berlin, Brooklyn, Jaffa, San Francisco, and now Chicago. She is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA in Film, Video, New Media, and Animation, 2017) and also has degrees from Swarthmore College and the San Francisco Art Institute. Her climate change-based collaboration with glaciologist Andrew Malone was awarded a 2015-16 Arts, Science & Culture Initiative Graduate Collaboration Grant from the University of Chicago and has been featured in conferences at the University of California in Santa Barbara and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Meredith is also dedicated to teaching art around Chicago and plays the viola in the Lakeview Orchestra.

Join us for her public lecture "Animating Glaciers"

Gabriela Halas

August 12-25

Gabriela Halas is an emerging writer, testing the publishing waters by submitting short stories and poetry to contests and open publication submissions. She has taken classes with Alaskan writers, Kyle Mellon, and the late Derick Burelson, who provided valuable feedback to the development of her writing. She has workshopped at and attended the Katchemak Bay Writers Conference (2016), and most recently the 49 Writers invited poet Roger Reeves’ 2017 poetry workshop. Gabriela’s work was featured in the show Arctic Perspectives: An Arctic Art and Science Event, at the University of Alaska Art Department exhibit in March, 2016. She presented four poems and photography written during a season of remote field work in the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge.

Gabriela explores both prose and poetry, using a diversity of voices to capture the emotionality of everyday life. Her stories are character focused and place driven, engaging natural phenomena with dark, often conflicting, and always complicated human sentiments. Her poems capture fleeting moments, hoping to capture when the ‘natural’ and the ‘human’ are no longer contained in separate words.

Join us for "Exploring the Physicality of Words in a Most Physical Place: A Writing in Wrangell Workshop"

Sarah McColl

August 28-September 10

Sarah McColl is a winner of StoryQuarterly's 2016 Nonfiction Prize judged by Meghan Daum. Her essays have appeared in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, JSTOR Daily, South Dakota Review, Green Mountains Review, In Context Journal, and alongside work by Ander Monson, Brenda Miller, David Shields, and Jenny Boully in the forthcoming anthology, The Shell Game, edited by Kim Adrian (University of Nebraska Press, 2018).

Her work is driven by a sense of wonder and has been supported with fellowships and scholarship awards from the MacDowell Colony, Ucross, Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Slice Literary Conference.

Before receiving her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College, she was the founding editor in chief of Yahoo Food. Her food writing has been featured in print and online for Bon Appétit, House Beautiful,Modern Farmer, Extra Crispy and others. She writes, edits, and teaches creative writing in New York.

Join us for "Community Interviews with the Residents Storytelling Alaska’s Foodways"

Zoe Keller

July 19-August 1

Zoe Keller uses fine-point mechanical pencils to create large-scale, highly detailed drawings of the natural world. Her images are woven with stories meant to inspire and inform, with a special focus on imperiled species and ecosystems. Her work has been shown in galleries across the country, and is included in the permanent collection of the National Museum of Wildlife Art. Originally from Woodstock, New York, Zoe’s art practice has taken her around the country, from the rocky Maine coast, to the shores of Lake Michigan, and finally to the lush forests of the Pacific Northwest. She currently resides in Portland, Oregon.

Join us for her public lecture “Drawing as Storytelling: Themes & Process”

Jowita Wyszomirska

August 12-25

Jowita Wyszomirska was born in Poland and immigrated with her family to Chicago in the early 90s. With an interdisciplinary approach to drawing, and projects ranging from site-specific installations to video experimentations, she expands beyond the two-dimensional surface to explore edges of tangible and intangible of what cannot be seen with a naked eye. Her work has been shown in exhibitions including Gallery Neptune and Brown, Washington DC, the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD, the VisArts, Rockville, MD, Foundry Art Centre, St. Charles, MO, among others. Other honors and awards include the Board of Governor's Award (b-grant) she received from the William G. Baker Jr. Memorial Fund in 2014, and numerous residencies including the Soaring Gardens Residency, Meshoppen, PA, Jentel Foundation, WY; Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, NE, International School of Painting, Drawing, and Sculpture in Umbria, Italy and upcoming Meg Hunt Residency, AK. Wyszomirska received her BFA from the Illinois State University and her MFA from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Join us for her public lecture.

Jill Haley

August 28-September 10

“Jill Haley’s National Park series has provided me a view to verdant valleys, soaring mountains, and desert landscapes. Her music adds a unique dimension that no other media can offer- I know what they sound like.” RJ Lannon

Jill Haley has released 4 recordings of original music about the United States National Parks. The instrumental music is scored for oboe, English horn, piano, guitar, French horn, cello and percussion. Her 3rd recording, “Mesa Verde Soundscapes,” received the “Best Piano Album- with Instrumentation” award from ZMR in 2014.

Her most recent recording, “National Park Soundscapes” was released in 2016 to celebrate the centennial year of the formation of the National Park Service. She presented concerts of this music around the country in National Parks and other settings.

She also presents concerts of National Park music with video of the images that inspired the compositions. She has done programs on Glacier, Zion and Bryce Canyon, and National Park Soundscapes.

She has been an Artist in Residence at 3 National Parks, Badlands, Glacier, and Mesa Verde. This afforded her the opportunity to live in the Park for an extended time while she was creating the music.

She also creates oboe and English horn lines as a guest musician for artists at Will Ackerman’s Imaginary Roads Studios.